Re: [PATCH for-4.19 6/6] build: Drop xorg-x11 as a build dependency

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 08.07.2024 12:21, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> On 08/07/2024 7:49 am, Jan Beulich wrote:
>> On 05.07.2024 17:20, Andrew Cooper wrote:
>>> The history on this one is complicated.  The note to README was added in
>>> commit 1f95747a4f16 ("Add openssl-dev and xorg-x11-dev to README") in 2007.
>>>
>>> At the time, there was a vendered version of Qemu in xen.git with a local
>>> modification using <X11/keysymdef.h> to access the monitor console over VNC.
>>>
>>> The final reference to keysymdef.h was dropped in commit 85896a7c4dc7 
>>> ("build:
>>> add autoconf to replace custom checks in tools/check") in 2012.  The next
>>> prior mention was in 2009 with commit a8ccb671c377 ("tools: fix x11 check")
>>> noting that x11 was not a direct dependcy of Xen; it was transitive through
>>> SDL for Qemu for source-based distros.
>>>
>>> These days its only the Debian based dockerfiles which install xorg-x11, and
>>> Qemu builds fine in these and others without x11.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> There may be one more past dependency, but I'm not sure since I don't know
>> the package split in the distros you touch files for. In unmodified_drivers/
>> (removed in 4.14) there was a use of the lndir utility coming (on SUSE
>> distros) in xorg-x11-util-devel. Then again unmodified_drivers/ may never
>> have been of any interest to gitlab-CI.
> 
> Huh.  I've not come across lndir before, but we've got an opencoded
> forms of it in several places.  (tools/include, and
> tools/firmware/xen-dir, maybe others.)
> 
> Still - as a build dependency, it should be the main xorg package, not
> the *-dev{el} package.  Whether a dev{el} package pulls in the main
> package is distro-dependent.

Just to mention it: It is the -devel package where this script lives (for
our distros at least), not the main one. I don't expect any -devel would
be pulled in by any main package?

> 4.15 is the oldest tree we test in Gitlab CI, and I don't believe we
> built unmodified_drivers/ in prior versions either.

Oh, sure, I didn't mean to indicate any change would be necessary, except ...

> Either way - I don't think this alters the outcome of the patch.  I can
> add a paragraph to the commit message noting that there might have been
> another unspecified dependency on xorg ?

... perhaps mention of this (yet later removed) dependency we had.

Jan